Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#21

Post by integralid » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

dgxyz wrote: post #12

anthonj wrote: post #5

Germany always surprise me with continuous contradiction in their society. Largest economy in eu but very unstable and riddled with wierd burocracy. Strongest worker protection, but very large amount of lobbysm. Most advanced railway system in eu, transformed into a joke by interdiction from said lobbies. You have to pay a "radio tax" to help funding press and keep it independent, but then fuck net neutrality. And I…

The one that always gets me is security and privacy paranoid and lecture me on the Stasi and using Apple phones and how they aren't repairable but then goes and uses unpatched rotten old Android they can't fix anyway and sticks fingers in ears. Nearly every German I know does this and I know a lot of Germans as half my family is German and my ex-partner is German.

I'll bite (I'm not German but I'm close culturally):

* Old Androids are not repairable because they're shit, not because a megacorp works hard to make repair impossible

* Old Androids may be hacked by a pegasus-like software (just like most new smartphones anyway), but at least the operating system does not lock you into its own closed ecosystem.

You may disagree, and correctly, because it's in part irrational, but many Europeans just dislike Apple and consider Android a more open/free ecosystem.

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#22

Post by heraldgeezer » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

ccozan wrote: post #9

Telekom is well known for the crappy service - but they have a de facto monopoly. For example, when it rains, the line goes down where I live. Solution: I got my Starlink. 3x speed. No crappy service. Weather independent. And surprinsingly cheaper ( 40 euros vs 45 ) . [ as much as I do not like Musk & co, this is a real useful thing he build for the mankind - internet everywere from sattelite ]

>For example, when it rains, the line goes down where I live.

Sounds like an access line issue with DSL (lol)

DSL is so old you can't even order it in Sweden anymore.

Also, the post above would be a core issue not access.

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#23

Post by kybernetyk » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:04 AM UTC

ccozan wrote: post #9

Telekom is well known for the crappy service - but they have a de facto monopoly. For example, when it rains, the line goes down where I live. Solution: I got my Starlink. 3x speed. No crappy service. Weather independent. And surprinsingly cheaper ( 40 euros vs 45 ) . [ as much as I do not like Musk & co, this is a real useful thing he build for the mankind - internet everywere from sattelite ]

I'm glad Vodafone is available where I live. They're not better but at least they're an alternative. Also Telekom manages only to deliver 250mbit/s while Vodafone gets 1gbit/s.

Last apartment I rented Telekom was the only option and that was one of the reasons why I decided to move.

Starlink I would love to try but as there's building and trees blocking the horizon it's not an option here sadly.

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#24

Post by trinix912 » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:05 AM UTC

ccozan wrote: post #9

Telekom is well known for the crappy service - but they have a de facto monopoly. For example, when it rains, the line goes down where I live. Solution: I got my Starlink. 3x speed. No crappy service. Weather independent. And surprinsingly cheaper ( 40 euros vs 45 ) . [ as much as I do not like Musk & co, this is a real useful thing he build for the mankind - internet everywere from sattelite ]

Except that with Telekom they answer to the German courts which might eventually force them to stop doing this but with Starlink you're at the mercy of some dudes halfway across the globe. If/when Starlink reaches the enshittification phase, there will be very little in the way.

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#25

Post by heraldgeezer » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:06 AM UTC

dgxyz wrote: post #12

anthonj wrote: post #5

Germany always surprise me with continuous contradiction in their society. Largest economy in eu but very unstable and riddled with wierd burocracy. Strongest worker protection, but very large amount of lobbysm. Most advanced railway system in eu, transformed into a joke by interdiction from said lobbies. You have to pay a "radio tax" to help funding press and keep it independent, but then fuck net neutrality. And I…

The one that always gets me is security and privacy paranoid and lecture me on the Stasi and using Apple phones and how they aren't repairable but then goes and uses unpatched rotten old Android they can't fix anyway and sticks fingers in ears. Nearly every German I know does this and I know a lot of Germans as half my family is German and my ex-partner is German.

>unpatched rotten old Android

Based.

Fsk Apple. Soy aah

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#26

Post by tannhaeuser » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:07 AM UTC

Why are you leading your visitors to your channel on a monopolist site? To bring ad revenue? There's no need for video for your type of content in the first place.

I get it - a 2026 "hackers" campaign for binging yt. And in case you haven't noticed: appealing to the net neutrality debate of the last millenium is meaningless with just a bunch of monopolists left on the net profitting of vast public investments. The kind of thing traditionalist "hackers" in it for social recognition would be wasting their time on.

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#27

Post by shevy-java » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:08 AM UTC

The laws should be changed. Corporate overlords thinking they can milk citizens should have mandatory jail times - something reasonable like a full decade or so. That way their'll behaviour would quickly change too and they'd have to stop those "we can slow them down and they can not do anything about it" shenanigans.

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#28

Post by blauditore » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:08 AM UTC

trinix912 wrote: post #24

ccozan wrote: post #9

Telekom is well known for the crappy service - but they have a de facto monopoly. For example, when it rains, the line goes down where I live. Solution: I got my Starlink. 3x speed. No crappy service. Weather independent. And surprinsingly cheaper ( 40 euros vs 45 ) . [ as much as I do not like Musk & co, this is a real useful thing he build for the mankind - internet everywere from sattelite ]

Except that with Telekom they answer to the German courts which might eventually force them to stop doing this but with Starlink you're at the mercy of some dudes halfway across the globe. If/when Starlink reaches the enshittification phase, there will be very little in the way.

The bright side of this is that there is at least some sort of competition, since they operate on very different infrastucture. This is the free market premise on how quality and price should improve. Reality is often different though, because most customers are not really comparing and/or voting with their feet.

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#29

Post by trinix912 » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:08 AM UTC

tannhaeuser wrote: post #26

Why are you leading your visitors to your channel on a monopolist site? To bring ad revenue? There's no need for video for your type of content in the first place. I get it - a 2026 "hackers" campaign for binging yt. And in case you haven't noticed: appealing to the net neutrality debate of the last millenium is meaningless with just a bunch of monopolists left on the net profitting of vast public investments. The ki…

Because they're betting on the video finding its way onto people's feed, thus raising awareness among non-techy people. Hard to do that with a random website.

Re: Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet

#30

Post by kybernetyk » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 10:09 AM UTC

dzogchen wrote: post #17

I unfortunetely have Deutsche Telekom as my ISP and I can confirm that in the evening websites that use Cloudflare have a latency of one minute or simply do not load at all. I don’t understand why anyone that serves the German market would use Cloudflare. Regardless of who is at fault, you are losing a lot of customers that way.

>Regardless of who is at fault, you are losing a lot of customers that way.

Don't know. Germans are stingy. I'm German, I live in Germany yet I don't even localize my software to German anymore because German downloads wouldn't convert in any meaningful way. (Even when I had German localization).

It's just anecdotal of course but every other dev I talked to would confirm this unless they had some very germany-specific product.